The story of Knepp

Charlie Burrell inherited the Knepp estate in 1983 at the age of 21. It had been farmed intensively since the Second World War, when the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign transformed Britain’s agriculture industry. The farm was already losing money, but Charlie persevered for another 17 years, along the way marrying travel writer

Isabella Tree in 1993. They were able to improve their yields through modernisation, but by the late nineties, they agreed the situation was unsustainable, both economically and ecologically.

In 2000, inspired by ecologists such as Frans Vera, they took the decision to cease farming and explore the idea of restoring biodiversity on the estate instead.

“We spent a very happy summer smashing up old Victorian drains, took up 75 miles of fences, barbed wire and gateposts, and just let the ditches silt up,” says Isabella. “We saw extraordinary things coming back in a very short space of time. The sound of insects, because we stopped using pesticides. And when the insects came back, the birds came back. And we realised that this could work.”

They eventually persuaded the Government of the merit of the idea and gained stewardship funding, and the project has never looked back.

Not everyone was a fan, though. “Some of our neighbours were horrified by the rise of the scrub. We were accused of everything from laziness to a lack of patriotism.”

But with the publication of Wilding in 2018 and the opening of tourism and accommodation businesses on the estate, Knepp became a magnet for those curious about fighting climate change through agriculture. Since then, Isabella has written a children’s book loosely based on the story called When We Went Wild, and her Wilding Handbook is due out later this year.